I just got back from Rainy and EVERYTHING Chris “Rainy Daze” Granrud has been reporting on the walleye bite up there is 100% true. The bite is exceptional. If you can pull off some decent boat control and run a spinner behind a bouncer or use your electronic to find a pod of fish on a reef and sit on them with jigs and shiners… you’ll have a blast with good numbers of fish in the 22″ – 25″ range!
Our best walleye producing depths ran 26′ – 31′ and reefs getting some wind produced the best. Orange #3 spinner blades behind a 3 oz. bottom bouncer was the hot ticket for Brad Juaire and me. Trolling speeds were 1.25 – 1.5 mph. If I got going any faster… we just didn’t seem to get bit.
We also noticed a LARGE number of smaller walleyes out on the reefs that were showing the tell tale signs of having a run in with a large pike based on the fresh war wounds many of these fish were exhibiting. And let me tell you, some of these bite marks covering a lot of distance from one side of the bite to the next.
Both Brad and I had at least one bite off each that felt more like a Mack truck speeding away with our spinner rigs than the typical walleye bite. Of course it was hard to tell how big these fish were without landing one… until we landed one! Man! Such fish up there!! I cannot wait to go back and I will definitely be bringing my heavier rods and larger baits along to have a more serious go at these huge pike that Rainy seems to have swimming around in big numbers.
Oh yeah, 40″ and 18 lbs on the nose.
